


We’re Not Kids Anymore

by mallahanmoxie (doityourselfbombs)



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket, All the Wrong Questions - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, It isn’t actually romantic but it’s still tagged, Moxie is the editor theory, Non-Explicit Sex, bi Moxie if you squint
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 15:38:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14572161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doityourselfbombs/pseuds/mallahanmoxie
Summary: Moxie Mallahan lives alone for ten years before a dead man knocks on her door.A look at Lemony Snicket and Moxie Mallahan’s relationship through the years.





	We’re Not Kids Anymore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moxie Mallahan, age 13 to 23.

Before, there were three times that Moxie thought she saw Lemony Snicket.

 

The first was just days after he’d left. Looking back, it was probably wishful thinking. She’d been expecting him to come back: to appear one day in Hungry’s as if he had never left or be in her library ready to lose at Parcheesi. She’d spent the night after the disastrous train ride thinking of biting remarks for his supposedly inevitable return. It wasn’t a situation she knew how to handle – what do you do when your friend pushes a man to his death?

 

But the mystery left town with the Thistle of the Valley, and Lemony Snicket went with it. 

 

She was sitting in her library when she saw him, typing up her notes. Stain’d-by-The-Sea was silent at this time of night, no longer interrupted by the bell. Moxie liked being awake this time of night. It helped to gain perspective.

 

In her peripheral vision, she caught a flash of movement out in the Clusterous Forest. Confused, she stood up and went to the window, peering out into the almost pitch darkness. There was a figure standing underneath the window. Moxie’s first thought was Ellington Feint, escaped from the prison car and back for some version of revenge – but the longer she looked, she realized that the figure had a distinctly male shape.

 

An idea gripped her, and without even closing her typewriter she sprinted down the stairs and out the door. By the time she got outside, she area was empty. And Lemony Snicket was not there.

 

It did not happen again for quite some time. Moxie saved up some money working in a neighboring town and moved to the city in search of her mother. Her father came with her, but stayed despondent as always – his leftover newspaper money bought them a little flat in a nice neighbourhood. At fifteen, nobody would hire her, even with years of newspaper work under her belt.

 

Age sixteen was a desperate year for Moxie. Her father started to go out at night and not come back until midday. Knowing where he went would just make things worse, and so she did not ask. Instead, she lied about her age and got a job waitressing at a diner. Wearing the too-short skirts and spilling milkshakes all day was horrible to Moxie, but it was money, and for the moment it was necessary.

 

Her father fell out the window on a Wednesday.

 

The officer told her it must have been an accident, that he’d had too much to drink and tumbled out the open window, but Moxie knew better. Her father was an exhausted man, and even his only daughter could not keep him afloat.

 

She did not have money for a nice funeral, so the ceremony was just her, the priest, and a coffin. She wore a dress and put her hair up like her mother used to do – a final tribute to the parents she now knew she would never get back.

 

After the funeral, a dark haired man approached her.

 

“Are you Moxie Mallahan?” he asked, holding out a nearly unrecognizable business card. The letters had faded, but it was undoubtedly her name.

 

“Who’d like to know?” Moxie replied.

 

“My name is Bertrand. Could we talk?.”

 

Moxie took a step forward. “That depends. I don’t like to associate myself with the wrong people.”

 

“I assure you, we are not the wrong people. My associates are… very famished divers, I’m afraid. But not the wrong people.” Bertrand smirked, and Moxie’s gaze snapped down to his carefully concealed ankle. It should not have surprised her that these people, whoever they really were, had followed her here. She wasn’t sure she wanted to pursue any sort of relationship to the organization... but she was a journalist, after all. This was her duty.

 

Moxie shook Bertrand’s hand, and the two started off towards a car - but not before she caught a glimpse of a familiar man standing amongst the gravestones.

 

This time, she didn’t try to follow him. It was better to leave some stones unturned.

 

Working with VFD was difficult, nerve-wracking, and unbelievably complicated. Everything and everyone was secretive and unreliable. Only after hours of asking did Moxie find out they’d found her name in a report about Stain’d-by-the-Sea, and even then no one would give her details.

 

“We had someone writing obituaries for the _Daily Punctillio_ , but they fired him,” Bertrand explained to her.

 

“Do I need the tattoo?”

 

“Don’t worry. You would be an informant for us, not an official volunteer. There’s no need for a tattoo... if you decide to do it, that is.”

 

“What happens if I don’t?”

 

“I’d rather not say.”

 

She took the job writing for the _Daily Punctillo_ , because what choice did she have? Obituaries quickly turned into a column, and soon after that a position as an editor. Meeting with various members of VFD every week proved to be a relatively easy task. She memorized the codes quickly, and giving warnings about fires and criminals on the loose didn’t make her feel morally ill.

 

Still, Moxie was exhausted. She worked from 7 in the morning to 10 at night, and her weekends were either spent working or trying to clean her apartment.

 

She was twenty years old, alone in the city, with barely any friends and nothing but the world’s horrors to fill her time.

 

“You’ve never brought a boy by the office,” one of her coworkers said one day.

 

“I’ve never had a boy to bring.”

 

“A girl, then?”

 

Moxie shook her head. “I’m focusing on my career. I haven’t exactly met anybody worth dating.”

 

“You’re so pretty, you know. If you just put in a little effort...”

 

“Thank you, Geraldine,” Moxie said crisply. “But I’m not lonely.”

 

As she neared her next birthday, Moxie came to the realization that she was unhappy. She was tired, and she was lonely, and she was starting to feel burnt out.

 

She told her boss that she wanted to start writing again. They were happy to let her work as an Investigative Journalist, but she could not change jobs until the end of the quarter. It wasn’t much, but Moxie desperately needed something to look forward to. Maybe this could be something.

 

On her twenty-first birthday, her coworkers took her to a bar downtown, and she got so drunk that the quiet intern had to carry her home. Everyone she worked with laughed about it for months afterward - but to her it was a sign. The next day, she signed a lease on a nicer apartment and adopted a cat. She named it Dottie, short for Dorothy. After all, Moxie was starting to understand how the poet had felt writing _Enough Rope_.

 

She liked working as an Investigative Journalist. She tracked her case and her case alone, no longer needing to read every article that made it into the paper. It was a refreshing break from the constant flow of information about the goings-on in the city. This was why Moxie did not see the flow of newspaper articles framing her childhood friend as an arsonist, a murderer, countless other things that he wasn’t.

 

Moxie saw him for the third and final time inside a train station. She’d been rushing, too busy thinking of a good lede to pay attention when she ran straight first into a man about her age, wearing a cowboy hat and a strangely lopsided mustache.

 

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking–“ she began, but stopped short when she noticed the man was staring at her. She adjusted her hat and brushed her hair behind her ears, suddenly self conscious.

 

“Nothing to worry about,” he said, slowly. “I hope I didn’t hold you up.”

 

Moxie picked up her suitcase and walked away to the nearest convenience store. She was uncharictaristically shaken, but wasn’t sure why. She hated being confused. She picked up a magazine and pretended to flip through it, watching the man the way she did when she met volunteers at this same train station. He was watching her, too.

 

“Are you going to buy something?” Asked the cashier.

 

Moxie fixed her with a look, but put the magazine on the counter to pay. The cashier took it and scanned it, remaining fixated on her book the entire time.

 

The telephone rang.

 

Moxie looked over at the man with the cowboy hat again - he was inside of a telephone booth across the lobby, hunched over the receiver. Frantically, she tried to remember where she had seen his face before. The dark eyes, thin frame, secretive body language - it reminded her of her contacts in VFD. But this wasn’t a meeting, and nobody knew she was supposed to be here.

 

“Are you going to answer the phone?” The cashier asked.

 

“Isn’t it for you?”

 

“The phone is for the customers.”

 

Moxie picked up the phone. Wondering where she knew this man from would accomplish nothing. She needed to know what he wanted.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Young lady,” said the voice on the other end. “Have you been good to your mother?”

 

That was a code, Moxie knew. They’d made her memorize a handful of them when she’d agreed to work with them. Her heart dropped. She knew how she recognized this man – a few years ago she had met a man with the same dark eyes and coy smirk. She’d known she recognized this man as well. He’d told her his name was Jacques, and only after a few months of working together did she get his last name.

 

This man was not Jacques – but she knew why she recognized him.

 

“The question is, has she been good to me?”

 

The man paused, but she could hear his breathing on the other end of the line.

 

“Kenneth Grahame,” Moxie said, and hung up. Before Snicket could catch up with her, she had disappeared into the crowd.

 

When Moxie arrived home a week later, she dug through the newspaper’s archives for mentions of the name Snicket. It didn’t take her long to find an article, dated two days after the day in the train station, proclaiming Lemony Snicket as dead.

 

Less than a month after, there was a knock on her door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! New chapter will be up soon.


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